The Apple iPad is your next work computer

Split View, coming to the Apple iPad with iOS 9.
Apple
For a while now, the Apple iPad has been floundering in its attempt to find a purpose.

It's great at a very few things — light web browsing, watching movies, reading comic books — but it's too big to go everywhere with you like an iPhone and too small and limited to get any serious work done like a Macbook.

But with iOS 9, the coming update to Apple's operating system for iPhones and iPads, the iPad is going to get a lot more flexible.

To be more precise, it's going to get a lot more like a PC.

The headlining feature for iPads with iOS 9 is Split View, a new split-screen feature that lets you run apps right next to each other. The screen can be split either 50-50 or 70-30, and you can drag pictures and other stuff right across the divide. So if you want to consult a map while you're texting with your friends about where to go for dinner, you have the power.

In short, Split View looks really neat, even if Windows devices (including the Xbox One) have had this for a while now.

There's also a new feature called "Slide Over" that lets you quickly slide an app over the thing you're working on, so you could, for example, answer a Twitter message without having to leave an app. A picture-in-picture mode can put video, including FaceTime calls, in a box in a corner of the screen.

Apple's Slide Over, coming to iPad with iOS 9.
Apple
This seems to represent a perfect compromise between the advantages of a phone — it's simple and easy to use, without getting lost in the interface — and a desktop computer, with all of your apps running in windows. Finally the iPad can multitask in a way we're used to.

Basically, and at the end of the day, it's going to make the iPad a lot more like a PC while retaining the stuff people like about iPads. It will still be touch-friendly, simple, and stable. You can just do more with it, all at once, without feeling the need to grab something with a keyboard just to cope.

It's good news for those who want to use their iPads at work — and almost certainly beneficial to Apple's partners at IBM, which are selling iPads to their enterprise customers. And if and when Apple opts to actually release a long-rumored, larger iPad, it will be that much more valuable.

The iPad may have found its niche: a simple, portable computer that's finally good at actually doing things, not just consuming media.